An Ember in the Ashes(102)

“I’m cold.”
The wood catches, and he feeds the fire patiently, absorbed in the task.
There are two scims strapped to his back, only a few feet away. I can grab one if I’m fast enough.
Do it! Now, while he’s distracted! I lean forward, but just as I’m about to lunge, he turns. I freeze, teetering ridiculously.
“Take this instead.” Veturius takes a dagger from his boot and tosses it to me before turning back to the flames. “It’s clean, at least.”
The dagger’s warm heft is comforting in my hand, and I test the edge on my thumb. Sharp. I sink back against the wall and eye him warily.
The fire eats away at the cold in the room. When it is burning brightly, Veturius unstraps his scims and leans them against the wall, well within my reach.
“I’ll be in there.” He nods to a closed door in the corner of the room, one I’d assumed led to a torture chamber. “That cloak won’t bite, you know. You’re stuck here until dawn. Might as well make yourself comfortable.”
He opens the door and disappears into the bathing chamber beyond. A moment later, I hear water pour into a tub.
The silk of my dress steams in the heat of the fire, and with one eye on the bath door, I let its warmth seep into me. Then I consider Veturius’s cloak. My skirt is ripped to my thigh, and a sleeve of my shirt hangs by a few threads. The laces of my bodice are torn, revealing far too much of me.
I look uneasily toward the bath. He’ll finish soon.
Eventually, I pick up the cloak and wrap it around myself. It is made of thick, finely woven cloth that is softer to the touch than I expect. I recognize the smell—his smell—spice and rain. I inhale deeply before jerking my nose away as the door rattles and Veturius emerges with his bloodied armor and weapons.
He’s scrubbed the mud from his skin and changed into clean fatigues.
“You’ll get tired standing all night,” he says. “You can sit on the bed. Or take the chair.” When I don’t move, he sighs. “You don’t trust me—I get it. But if I wanted to hurt you, I’d already have done it. Please, sit down.”
“I’m keeping the knife.”
“You can have a scim too. I have a pile of weapons I never want to see again. Take them all.”
He drops into the chair and begins cleaning his greaves. I sit stiffly on his bed, ready to bring up the knife if I have to. He is close enough to touch.
He says nothing for a long time, his movements heavy and tired. Beneath the shadow of his mask, his full mouth seems harsh, his jaw unyielding. But I remember his face from the festival. It’s a handsome face, and even the mask can’t hide that. His diamond-shaped Blackcliff tattoo is a dark shadow on the back of his neck, parts of it tinged silver where the metal of his mask cleaves to his skin.
He looks up, sensing my gaze, and then glances quickly away. But not before I see telltale redness in his eyes.
I loosen my white-knuckled grip on the knife. What could upset a Mask, an Aspirant, enough to bring him to tears?

“What you told me about living in the Scholar’s Quarter,” he breaks the quiet of the room, “with your grandparents and your brother. That was true, once.”
“Until a few weeks ago. The Empire raided us. A Mask came. Killed my grandparents. Took my brother.”
“And your parents?”
“Dead. A long time ago now. My brother’s the only one left. But he’s in the death cells in Bekkar Prison.”
Veturius glances up at me. “Bekkar doesn’t have death cells.”
His comment is offhand and so unexpected that it takes a moment to sink in. He looks back down at his work, blind to the impact his words have had on me. “Who told you he was in a death cell? And who told you he was in Bekkar?”
“I...heard a rumor.” Idiot, Laia. You walked into this. “From...a friend.”
“Your friend’s wrong. Or confused. Serra’s only death cells are in Central. Bekkar’s much smaller and usually filled with swindling Mercators and Plebeian drunks. It’s no Kauf, that’s for sure. I would know. I’ve done guard duty at both. “
“But if Blackcliff, say, got attacked...” My mind races as I think of what Mazen told me. “Isn’t it Bekkar that provides your...security?”
Veturius chuckles without smiling. “Bekkar, protecting Blackcliff? Don’t let my mother hear. Blackcliff has three thousand students bred for war, Laia. Some are young, but unless they’re green, they’re dangerous. The school doesn’t need backup, least of all from a pack of bored auxes who spend their days taking bribes and racing roaches.”
Could I have misheard Mazen? No, he said Darin was in the death cells in Bekkar and that the prison provided Blackcliff’s security backup, all of which Veturius has just refuted. Is Mazen’s information bad, or is he lying to me? Once, I’d have given him the benefit of the doubt, but Cook’s suspicions...and Keenan’s...and my own weigh heavy on me. Why would Mazen lie? Where is Darin, really? Is he even alive?
He is alive. He must be. I’d know if my brother was dead. I’d feel it.
“I’ve upset you,” Veturius says. “I’m sorry. But if your brother’s in Bekkar, he’ll be out soon. No one stays in there more than a few weeks.”
“Of course.” I clear my throat and try to wipe the confusion from my face.
Masks can smell a lie. They can sense deceit. I have to act as normal as I can.
“It was just a rumor.”
He gives me a swift look, and I hold my breath, thinking he is about to question me further. But he just nods and raises his leather greaves, now clean, to the firelight before hanging them from the hooks embedded into the wall.